Mr. Chairman, Your Excellencies, Distinguished
Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen,
 
May I first of all express my warm thanks to ,the
President of the Asian Association of Management
Organisations for the invitation so kindly extended
to me to attend this Conference.
 
I take great pleasure in addressing this
distinguished audience on the subject of ASEAN's
contribution to Regional Development in the context
of the managerial functions to be performed by
ASEAN's present and future leaders in implementing
ASEAN's principal objective of the pursuit of peace,
stability and security in the Southeast Asian Region
through its expanded activities in the economic,
social, political and other fields.
 
May I also say how happy I am to see ,this
particular session chaired by my good friend Tan Sri
Ghazalie Shafie, whose wisdom and deep knowledge of
ASEAN affairs in particular, and international
problems in general, have marked him as one of the
outstanding personalities on todays international
political forum.
 
Let me first start on a personal note.
 
I was rather intrigued by the description of the
overall theme of this Conference, namely: The New
Region The New Manager: Changes and Challenges. I
frankly had some misgivings whether the overall
theme was indeed relevant to the ASEAN region.
However, these misgivings disappeared immediately
when I read the lucidly worded short note on the
Conference theme and sub-themes.
 
Indeed, ASEAN as it is presently constituted and as
it progresses through the various stages of
development, political, economic, social, cultural,
to give its people a better life has indeed emerged
as "The New Region". It is continuously facing
changes and confronted with challenges. But it is
these vicissitudes which continue to inject new
aspects into the course of developments of the ASEAN
Region. As the note so appropriately stressed: "Here
is the challenge to the new manager operating in the
new region".
 
Obviously, these new challenges cannot be divorced
from the prevailing international economic crisis,
which, on the other hand, accentuates the necessity
for economic interdependence among all members of
the international community.
 
In such an increasingly interdependent world, it is
essential that international economic problems be
approached in a global, integrated and comprehensive
manner, if we want to narrow the gap between the
"House of the Haves" of the North and the "House of
Want" of the South. The ASEAN leaders also recognize
that through regional co-operation, intra-State
economic difficulties could be more satisfactorily
overcome and solved.
 
Accordingly, the problem of how to successfully
manage the fundamental issues of economic
interdependence will become even more relevant in
view of the problem it poses to regional
organizations, such as ASEAN.
 
In the context of a larger environment of global
interdependence, the question may be asked to what
degree the ASEAN region can remain a structure of
its own in managing the costs and benefits of such
interdependence, particularly in the economic field.
 
In the sense that interdependence, be it political,
economic, social or technical, would increase a
country's sensitivity or vulnerability to changes in
the external political and economic environment, the
managing of interdependent relations, particularly
in the ASEAN context, would be subject to different
sets of determinant factors depending on and
relating to the specific field of activities.
 
Since management is basically a political concept
which nationally is properly institutionalized and
which involves the exercise of a certain degree of
power in the decision-making process, managerial
functions in the political field should for obvious
reasons perhaps be less inhibited to be performed
than in the economic field.
 
Politically, the sense of community among ASEAN's
member states could readily be established mostly on
the basis of security considerations, despite the
differences in perception and since institutionally
it would essentially be confined to the executive
branch of the foreign office.
 
This sense of community becomes a different ball
game when it comes to implementing the principle of
the equitable sharing of benefits in the cost and
benefit equation of ASEAN's economic activities, as
their implementation is entrusted to numerous
ministries for further consideration in the context
of the respective National Development Plans.
 
In the socio-cultural field, ASEAN member states
would still face the problem of overcoming the
dilemma of preserving their respective national
identities while working for the interest of the
organization as a whole. This poses the similar
problem in contemporary international relations of
how to keep the collective benefits from extensive
political and economic transactions while, at the
same time, preserving the freedom for each nation to
pursue its own legitimate economic and social
objectives.
 
This brings me to the much promoted slogan of the
"socialization" or, perhaps, popularization of
ASEAN, or "memasyaratkan" ASEAN in an effort towards
bridging the managing difficulties I mentioned
earlier. This process could be facilitated by
intensifying meetings and exchanges of views among
ASEAN managerial personnel with a view towards
attaining a deeper sense of community in the
performance of their managerial functions in their
respective fields, imbued with the ASEAN spirit of
co-operation, solidarity and cohesion.
 
Turning now to the ASEAN experience for gaining an
insight into the performance of managerial
functions, ASEAN could be considered a unique
organization, in the sense that these functions are
carried out without the existence of a managing
agency as such because of ASEAN's decentralized
decision-making machinery.
 
Collective actions in ASEAN take, therefore, the
form of a synthesis of different policies derived
from different points of view. Moreover, because of
the absence of a centralized power-centre, the
emphasis would be on adjustment rather than control
or coercion.
 
ASEAN's system of decision-making appears to find
its origin in the cultural background of some of its
members where the consensus approach and the two
corresponding, commonly used basic terms of
"musyawarah" and "mufakat", are associated with
traditional village politics in certain parts of
some of ASEAN's member states.
 
In order to maintain a balance among the
pronouncement on foreign policy on the basis of
their respective national interests, ASEAN member
states achieve their common objectives through a
system of sharing and dividing. Actually, what I
mean to say is that countries do not voluntarily
assume "burden sharing" because it is fair, but
because the momentum of the turning of the wheels of
history makes it a necessity.
 
Therefore, a policy to be undertaken by a member
state, either in the economic or socio-political
field, should therefore, necessarily undergo
different stages of formulation and acceptance,
first at the national level and subsequently at the
regional or international level.
 
Since national consensus building should be the
first stage prior to any regional or international
meeting, this procedure would obviously call for
certain types of managing personalities or managing
skills in order to avoid national over management in
relation to regional organizational management.
These managerial aspects are generally relevant to
the organizational functioning of ASEAN as a whole.
 
Turning now to the actual need for managerial
personnel in ASEAN's development process, I would
say that the need for comprehensive management would
be commensurate with the scope and pace of the
growth of interdependence among its member states.
 
However, the closer the interdependancy the more
constrained the member countries will be since their
collective actions will resemble those within their
own national boundaries. The irony of the matter is
that a decrease in interdependency would obviously
lessen the need for control and the narrowing of
their self-interest.
 
All these theorizing aside, it can not be denied
that collective efforts are inevitably needed if
common problems such as food, energy, and other are
to be solved or somehow to be managed.  Carrying out
common projects, requires by necessity concerted
action on a regional basis or in the global context.
In today's world, no country can afford to go alone.
The fragmentary international society of yesteryears
is obsolete. Our common interests are immeasurebly
stronger than what divides us. And through sincere
regional and international co-operation, the
possible establishment of the integrated community
of tomorrow should not remain a dream.
 
Therefore, a healthy growth of ASEAN will be a
meaningful contribution in this transitory process.
To this end, the very system of ASEAN's
decision-making process should also direct and
educate its managerial leadership to concentrate on
achieving the utmost effectiveness and efficiency of
the organization. The manner in which ASEAN is
intensifying co-operation in the fields of finance,
science and technology, and technical co-oq?eration
among developing countries represents new trends and
perceptions in ASEAN's regional as well as global
co-operation. I am sure this encouraging development
reflects the growing maturity of ASEAN's managerial
leaders and the corresponding increasing capability
of managing their own ASEAN's affairs.
 
Such managerial functions obviously demand the
availability of the required personnel to
competently manage those different types and levels
of ASEAN's activities. Their views and attitudes
regarding the proper working of ASEAN's machinery
may well be conditioned by their socio-cultural
upbringing, their educational background or their
socialization process (process pemasyarakatan).
 
However, whatever their ideas may be, they will most
of all, be either Government technocrats or members
of the private sector having the knowledgebility of
ASEAN's aims and purposes and imbued by a strong
belief in ASEAN's future and progress as a
determinant factor in international politics and
economics, particularly relating to the Southeast
Asian Region. Needless to say that in the
performance of their respective managerial
functions, they should all be strongly inspired by
the ASEAN spirit of co-operation, consolidation and
cohesion.
 
Permit me to dwell briefly on intra-ASEAN
co-operation and its managerial functions. In this
respect I should like to mention industrial
co-operation as a key to increased intra-ASEAN trade
and particularly with regard to industrial
complementation for the participation and
involvement of the private sector to manage ASEAN's
industrial production activities. In general,
agreements in this field are genera]ly negotiated
through the initiatives of the business communities
and facilitated by the tariff concessions approved
by the respective ASEAN Governments.
 
In this connection, I should like to make particular
mention of the Indonesian Aceh Urea Project as one
of the joint industrial projects under the package
deal arrangements. This project poses a convenient
testing ground to judge the extent to which an
intra-ASEAN joint management could perform its
function in meeting the regional requirements of
essential commodities.
 
In addition to the foregoing and other ASEAN
industrial projects, I am sure you are aware of
similar arrangements in the fields of banking,
insurance, shipping, tourism, agriculture, etc.
which stimulate and obligate ASEAN managers to
inject the dynamic elements to effectuate an
accelerated growth of regional development.
 
In this process, outside assistance should be a
welcome stimulant. This should, however, only be a
temporary, transient factor to help us to attain the
level of self-sustaining growth; in other words to
assist us in the take-off so that we can fly on our
own.
 
It would, however, be illusory to contend ourselves
with the thought that developing, and particularly
ex-colonial countries whose progress had been
purposefully kept at snail-pace, if at all, could
"leap-frog" decades, let alone centuries of
backwardness, by waving the magic wand of technology
and managerial wherewithal. Even with the
availability of the most sophisticated technology,
it would be impossible to transform, say a 15th
century setting overnight into an environment
blessed with the modern imp}ements of the last
quarter of the twentieth century. It is, therefore,
not enough to have the availability of "technical
brains" only in a regional organization for that
matter. It is imperative to have the
technical-managerial know-how of how to utilize
these "technical brains" to the fullest extent. In
other words, it is the people and their competence
who propel economic development. This is a long and
tedious process because people have come to fully
realize that there is no such thing as "instant
development".
 
Mr. Chairman,
 
The management of intra-ASEAN development
co-operation has assumed essential dimensions.  It
should, therefore, be effectively and collectively
approached iœ it is to make its expected
politico-socio-economic impact on the region's
development. Consequently, to meet ASEAN's
managerial needs perhaps the establishment of a
Regional ASEAN Management Institute merits serious
consideration. Such an Institute will better equip
present and potential future ASEAN managers with the
necessary implements to assume the responsibilities
to generate ASEAN to attain a full realization of
its destiny and its own potential within the
confines of its own history, culture and tradition.
 
In this "New Region", we are experiencing the
excitement of how constant changes affect our daily
life, whether they are political, economic, social
or cultural. Our challenge today is to mobilize the
political will to act in concert towards the
successful attainment of the goals that we share; to
go beyond the rhetoric of interdependence; to fully
heed its unavoidable implications for our individual
national! interest as well as for the interest of
the ASEAN region as a whole.
 
It is in our hands to mould ASEAN into an organized
community for the fulfillment of the principles and
purposes enunciated in the Bangkok and the Bali
Declarations respectively.
 
It is, therefore, my hope that when our ideals, our
travail, our work for the full realization of ASEAN
are judged in a historical projection, it will be
found that we have done our duty.